Twitter is Shit
Twitter could kill this site. And newspapers. And indeed the internet, as you know it. Reporting, researching used to take time, care, effort. Now some spotty herbert has 140 characters to tell you why you should be outraged about an oil tanker, or Gately-Gate. 140 characters is quite enough, because Twitter will tell you what’s happened, what’s happening and what to do next.
This site suffers because the 2 second thoughts and inspirations and links get stuck up there, with guaranteed exposure, but on here they could be examined and poked and caressed until they reach fruition. Twitter is the internet’s burger and blogs are the internet’s sirloin. But no-one’s got time for sirloin have they?
Newspapers can’t compete, because they have to wait until the next print run, but Twitter can tell you in real time. Real journalism has it’s head on the block. In fact the papers have moved to using Twitter/Facebook etc as it’s primary information gathering resource. So the papers become a longer, more time consuming version of Twitter.
But I don’t want that. I want to see in depth reporting, expert opinion, to be enlightened on the matters of the world and to be introduced to the wonders of the internet by people who understand and treasure them.
It could be that this is how it’ll be forever, bite sized chunks of info processed and forgotten as quickly as they arrived. That would, for me anyway, be horrible.
I feel obliged to use Twitter, and it can be good, but I need to write words, lots of words. Starting today.
